In September 2020 I started what became a long #Twitter thread on #MultilingualResearch.https://twitter.com/petersuber/status/1307774697531113474
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Update. The new issue of the Journal of Electronic Publishing (Vol 27, No 1) is devoted to Multilingual Publishing and Scholarship.
https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/jep/issue/262/info/Update. Sorry I didn't see this sooner. Yesterday #COARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment) hosted a webinar on #multilingualism and language biases in research #assessment.
https://vastuullinentiede.fi/en/events/coara-wg-webinar-multilingualism-and-language-biases-research-assessment -
Update. Sorry I didn't see this sooner. Yesterday #COARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment) hosted a webinar on #multilingualism and language biases in research #assessment.
https://vastuullinentiede.fi/en/events/coara-wg-webinar-multilingualism-and-language-biases-research-assessmentUpdate. A trilingual editor of an English-language journal talks about how to recognize and publish good research submitted in weak English by scientists whose first language is not English.
https://ject.edpsciences.org/articles/ject/full_html/2024/03/ject240024s/ject240024s.html -
Update. A trilingual editor of an English-language journal talks about how to recognize and publish good research submitted in weak English by scientists whose first language is not English.
https://ject.edpsciences.org/articles/ject/full_html/2024/03/ject240024s/ject240024s.htmlUpdate. If you follow this thread, you might be interested in this #ChronosHub event on Oct 9:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cSFfJ1JRRnqx2WiynXTKvg#/registration"For non-native English speakers, the publishing experience can be difficult to navigate…Publishing in more local languages…would be the ultimate author experience, but this might not always be feasible. What are considerations in making decisions around this? And what are the easier changes to make that could have a big impact on non-native English authors?"
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Update. If you follow this thread, you might be interested in this #ChronosHub event on Oct 9:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cSFfJ1JRRnqx2WiynXTKvg#/registration"For non-native English speakers, the publishing experience can be difficult to navigate…Publishing in more local languages…would be the ultimate author experience, but this might not always be feasible. What are considerations in making decisions around this? And what are the easier changes to make that could have a big impact on non-native English authors?"
Update. New study: "Existing datasets [for #NLP and #LLM training] are almost all in the English language. In this work, our primary goal is to bridge the language gap by building a human-curated…dataset spanning 65 languages…Furthermore, we create the most extensive multilingual collection to date, comprising 513 million instances through templating and augmenting existing datasets across 114 languages. [We have released the] #OpenSource…Aya Dataset."
https://aclanthology.org/2024.acl-long.620/ -
Update. New study: "Existing datasets [for #NLP and #LLM training] are almost all in the English language. In this work, our primary goal is to bridge the language gap by building a human-curated…dataset spanning 65 languages…Furthermore, we create the most extensive multilingual collection to date, comprising 513 million instances through templating and augmenting existing datasets across 114 languages. [We have released the] #OpenSource…Aya Dataset."
https://aclanthology.org/2024.acl-long.620/Update. "English-only journals have historically dominated the field [of #LIS. But] a significant number of multilingual journals have been indexed in Scopus over the past two decades. The 42 identified multilingual journals span 25 countries and encompass 18 languages…The study also uncovered disparities in journal metrics and rankings, with multilingual journals consistently scoring lower than their English-only counterparts."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09610006241285510 -
Update. "English-only journals have historically dominated the field [of #LIS. But] a significant number of multilingual journals have been indexed in Scopus over the past two decades. The 42 identified multilingual journals span 25 countries and encompass 18 languages…The study also uncovered disparities in journal metrics and rankings, with multilingual journals consistently scoring lower than their English-only counterparts."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09610006241285510Update. "Communicating all research in one single language means that language shapes the research too. Language shapes what is possible to express, contextualize, or reveal…Privileging the English language in scholarly communication marginalizes and disadvantages researchers who are not first-language English speakers, or not English-language speakers at all."
https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/jep/article/id/6258/ -
Update. "Communicating all research in one single language means that language shapes the research too. Language shapes what is possible to express, contextualize, or reveal…Privileging the English language in scholarly communication marginalizes and disadvantages researchers who are not first-language English speakers, or not English-language speakers at all."
https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/jep/article/id/6258/Update. "Multilingual publishing has been an ongoing and documented practice in SSH for many years, with numerous studies demonstrating the benefits of publishing research in multiple languages. However, there has been relatively little research into the extent to which multilingual publishing is practised in STEM. This chapter aims to address this gap in the literature and demonstrate that multilingual publishing is also visible in STEM fields."
https://books.google.com/books?id=1eFBEQAAQBAJ&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA151&hl=en&source=newbks_fb#v=onepage&q&f=false -
Update. "Multilingual publishing has been an ongoing and documented practice in SSH for many years, with numerous studies demonstrating the benefits of publishing research in multiple languages. However, there has been relatively little research into the extent to which multilingual publishing is practised in STEM. This chapter aims to address this gap in the literature and demonstrate that multilingual publishing is also visible in STEM fields."
https://books.google.com/books?id=1eFBEQAAQBAJ&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA151&hl=en&source=newbks_fb#v=onepage&q&f=falseUpdate. "Under the pressure of English as the lingua franca for research publication, local journals have changed their language policies for survival. While some discontinued their local-language editions and became English journals, others resorted to bilingual publishing through translation…[The] shift to bilingual publishing [by journals based in #Spain] increases the proportion of international contributions and widens the geographical distribution of contributing countries."
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.1665 -
Update. "Under the pressure of English as the lingua franca for research publication, local journals have changed their language policies for survival. While some discontinued their local-language editions and became English journals, others resorted to bilingual publishing through translation…[The] shift to bilingual publishing [by journals based in #Spain] increases the proportion of international contributions and widens the geographical distribution of contributing countries."
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.1665Update. A profile of Japanese biologist Tatsuya Amano and his work to foster #MultilingualResearch and spotlight discrimination against non-fluent speakers of English.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00157-5
(#paywalled) -
Update. A profile of Japanese biologist Tatsuya Amano and his work to foster #MultilingualResearch and spotlight discrimination against non-fluent speakers of English.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00157-5
(#paywalled)Update. See the Linguistic Society of America (#LSA) Statement Against Designating English as the Official Language.
https://www.lsadc.org/content.asp?admin=Y&contentid=468"The United States has always been a multilingual country, and this gives it strength…Citizens of the US and of all democracies inevitably have different linguistic ways of navigating their lives, and enforced monolingualism never achieves national unity…'Official English' policies do not improve economic prospects for those who arrive in the US speaking another language, nor do they improve communication for those who live in multilingual communities…Supporting and promoting multilingualism makes a nation stronger, not weaker."
#Multilingualism #MultilingualResearch #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
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Update. See the Linguistic Society of America (#LSA) Statement Against Designating English as the Official Language.
https://www.lsadc.org/content.asp?admin=Y&contentid=468"The United States has always been a multilingual country, and this gives it strength…Citizens of the US and of all democracies inevitably have different linguistic ways of navigating their lives, and enforced monolingualism never achieves national unity…'Official English' policies do not improve economic prospects for those who arrive in the US speaking another language, nor do they improve communication for those who live in multilingual communities…Supporting and promoting multilingualism makes a nation stronger, not weaker."
#Multilingualism #MultilingualResearch #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "For the 1990-2023 period, we find that only Indonesian, Portuguese and Spanish have expanded at a faster pace than English. Country-level analyses show that this trend is due to the growing strength of the Latin American and Indonesian academic circuits. Our results also confirm…that social sciences and humanities are the least English-dominated fields. Our findings suggest that policies recognizing the value of both national-language and English-language publications have had a concrete impact on the distribution of languages in the global field of scholarly communication."
https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.21100 -
Update. "For the 1990-2023 period, we find that only Indonesian, Portuguese and Spanish have expanded at a faster pace than English. Country-level analyses show that this trend is due to the growing strength of the Latin American and Indonesian academic circuits. Our results also confirm…that social sciences and humanities are the least English-dominated fields. Our findings suggest that policies recognizing the value of both national-language and English-language publications have had a concrete impact on the distribution of languages in the global field of scholarly communication."
https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.21100Update. "A scholarly communication ecosystem with one dominant language presents numerous inequities. Implementing multilingualism is complex and there is no single strategy to achieve it. Rather, multilingualism can take different forms, and small steps taken by different actors can add up to increase linguistic diversity. This commentary unpacks some of the complexities involved in multilingual scholarly communication and offers some concrete recommendations for moving forward."
https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/cjils/article/view/22292 -
Update. "A scholarly communication ecosystem with one dominant language presents numerous inequities. Implementing multilingualism is complex and there is no single strategy to achieve it. Rather, multilingualism can take different forms, and small steps taken by different actors can add up to increase linguistic diversity. This commentary unpacks some of the complexities involved in multilingual scholarly communication and offers some concrete recommendations for moving forward."
https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/cjils/article/view/22292Update. "Multilingualism in science…expands the participation and dialogue among diverse communities of scientists and influences stakeholders who use science to address urgent global issues. [But] systematic and sustained implementation of multilingual scholarly communication and peer-reviewed publishing is cumbersome for journal management platforms, research teams, and editorial boards…This Research Note…proposes the first statement of the _Journal of Disaster Studies_ (JDS) on inclusive multilingualism."
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/971123 -
Update. "Multilingualism in science…expands the participation and dialogue among diverse communities of scientists and influences stakeholders who use science to address urgent global issues. [But] systematic and sustained implementation of multilingual scholarly communication and peer-reviewed publishing is cumbersome for journal management platforms, research teams, and editorial boards…This Research Note…proposes the first statement of the _Journal of Disaster Studies_ (JDS) on inclusive multilingualism."
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/971123Update. New from #COAR (@coar_repositories
"This paper explores the concept of #semantic #multilingual #search: an emerging approach that retrieves information by meaning rather than by exact wording, enabling users to search in any supported language and discover relevant work across all languages…When you ask a question in your language, the entire world should have a chance to understand and respond." -
Update. New from #COAR (@coar_repositories
"This paper explores the concept of #semantic #multilingual #search: an emerging approach that retrieves information by meaning rather than by exact wording, enabling users to search in any supported language and discover relevant work across all languages…When you ask a question in your language, the entire world should have a chance to understand and respond." Update. It's rare to see a journal editorial call for #MultilingualResearch. Here's one from _Applied and Environmental Microbiology_, published by the American Society of Microbiology.
https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.02229-25Language barriers "do more than prevent access to opportunities. They cement unfair assumptions about scientific competence and preferentially amplify voices that are proficient, or perceived to be proficient, in the dominant language, shaping scientific discourse in narrow and exclusive ways. This editorial explores how linguistic bias sustains professional hierarchies and restricts scientific progress. It also highlights our journal’s initiatives to overcome language-based barriers in publishing and foster equitable participation in scientific exchange."
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Update. It's rare to see a journal editorial call for #MultilingualResearch. Here's one from _Applied and Environmental Microbiology_, published by the American Society of Microbiology.
https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.02229-25Language barriers "do more than prevent access to opportunities. They cement unfair assumptions about scientific competence and preferentially amplify voices that are proficient, or perceived to be proficient, in the dominant language, shaping scientific discourse in narrow and exclusive ways. This editorial explores how linguistic bias sustains professional hierarchies and restricts scientific progress. It also highlights our journal’s initiatives to overcome language-based barriers in publishing and foster equitable participation in scientific exchange."
Update. "For the 1990–2023 period, we find that only Indonesian, Portuguese, and Spanish have expanded at a faster pace than English [in academic publishing]… Social sciences and humanities are the least English-dominated fields… Policies recognizing the value of both national-language and English-language publications have had a concrete impact on the distribution of languages in the global field of scholarly communication."
https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.70055 -
Update. "For the 1990–2023 period, we find that only Indonesian, Portuguese, and Spanish have expanded at a faster pace than English [in academic publishing]… Social sciences and humanities are the least English-dominated fields… Policies recognizing the value of both national-language and English-language publications have had a concrete impact on the distribution of languages in the global field of scholarly communication."
https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.70055Update. "Beginning February 11, 2026, #arXiv will require that all submissions have a full English-language version, either as the original language or as an included translation."
https://blog.arxiv.org/2025/11/21/upcoming-policy-change-to-non-english-language-paper-submissions/Coverage of the new policy in Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00229-0
